Sheila K. Adams

Partial Transcript: Well, I’m Sheila K. Adams and I was born and raised here in Madison County, sort of back off on down the ridge here. My great-grandmother’s home place is within a mile of here and then you go on across the mountain, over into this little community called Sodom and I grew up there. And then I married Jim Taylor who was a wonderful musician—hammered dulcimer—built hammered dulcimers, a very good man.
And he passed away in 2009 on March 7 and I’ve been here ever since. Of course, my family have been here. We’ve got a land deed or a land grant that was granted from Blunt over in Tennessee and was granted to my great, great—well, it was in 1831 or 1731—excuse me—when the first Nortons moved in and got part of the land grant from Blunt over in Tennessee.

Partial Transcript: Oh, wow. It was—you know when you’re young, when you’re little, when you are a little kid—and you see all this stuff. See we had the disadvantage and I call it a true disadvantage of TV because my parents and my grandparents were barely introduced to it. Mom and Daddy saw a lot more of it but, can you imagine? My father hadn’t been born in 1920. My grandparents—my grandfather being born in 1880 and during that time, we have now—the world is now at our finger tips in ways it has never been before.
You know whether you believe it or not, you are going to find a little kernel of truth on there and that’s all my family needed to tell off this lie ever was—with just that one little kernel of truth. But anyway, there were story tellers and musicians and one of the things that the border country Scotts brought with them—not much in material goods, they certainly didn’t bring riches—and the reason they came here was because they could finally own land.
That’s documented down through our family time after time after time. They would buy the most land they could possibly get their hands on and Daddy said, “Yeah” and forty acres of it would yield twelve bushel of corn so, the dirt was poor, people were poor—you know materialistically but, boy they had a wealth of information, recipes, old sayings. I mean some of the funniest stories you’ve ever heard—didn’t tell much in the way of the jack tales but, they sang a lot of stories which is what I fell in love with when I was five years old is the singing of what they called love songs.
And everything was a love song. There’s a verse that goes, he took her by the lily-white hand, led her across the hall, pulled out his sword and cut off her head and kicked it against the wall. And Granny would lean back and say, now that is one of them big long winded love songs. But, they were always love songs. And I think at my best old age now of almost 64, I think it was to distinguish between the sacred and the secular songs.
And I don’t think they—you know if you tried to talk proper, you is getting above—you are raising that secular, might have fell into that trough of don’t say that word. They will think you are getting above your raising. So, my guess is they were just love songs and the others, meeting house songs, are sacred. And I listened, as I was saying earlier, I don’t recall a day in my life—not a single day since I can remember recalling days and experiences that there was not music as a part of that day somehow—in some way.

Partial Transcript: Well, there were four families over there that pretty much where I think were the strongest as far as keeping traditions going that had been passed down through families—even right on to Kenny Creighton how to build a log cabin, you know? They were—the Rays—R-a-y’s, the Nortons, the Chandlers and the Wallins—W-a-l-l-i-n. Now the Wallins were an interesting bunch. They came over on the second ship, the Puritans. Stayed there six months, boom and it got warm weather.
They headed for warmer climates and less of a poisonous religion I would say and they dropped the G off the end of their name and they were English but, they lived in the northern part of England which is where most of my family came from. There were very few that came from down around London and all. They were more Southern Scottish and Northern English. Then they got some of them bumped to Northern Ireland.
And so, it’s been a steady stream you know, since they first started coming and the first bunch, which my family was in, were not fleeing the potato famine. You know they were coming here because they told them they could own land. Andrew Jackson is related to me somehow, you know? Because all the people that lived in what they called the wilderness back in the 1700s, they were all related because you know married back then to those four families, you know it was—I am related in so many different ways to my parents other than them just being my parents that it is almost funny.
As a matter of fact, I tell it as a funny tale but, one thing good that happened was all that music remained important while they were coming over here. And I imagine them kind of sewing those songs into their heart like they sowed the seeds to those flowers in the hems around their arms and in their dresses and around the hems and waist of their dresses. They actually sowed seeds because their husband said, we ain’t taking up room in a box to put a bunch of seeds.
Well, they brought these songs in their heart. I really believe that and they’ve saved my life and shaped my life. This music and the community, the people—growing up taught me a lot of stuff about myself because you were expected to—you didn’t want to see your parents after you got up in the morning. You didn’t want to see them until it was dark and so, you hit the woods—barefooted with no lunch. And you didn’t have to worry about it because if you cut your foot, you could go in up at Aunt Ethel’s and she’d fix your foot and offer you some peach cobbler.
You know it’s because the way of life that was when I was growing up, they were still killing hogs. We would sit up all night and make sausage and boy, it was good. You know it—they had cows and chickens and it was—as Granny used to say, my heart yearns back for the simpler times, not to be confused with easier. So—but growing up for me, was a lot like growing up during the depression. They kept everything.
My mother had a box like Linda—Robin and Linda Williams—the Linda of Rob Williams and I were talking and realized and got tickled about the fact that her mother and my mother both had boxes written on the top with a pencil that said strings that are too small to do anything with. They would not throw anything out. (Laughs)
And I’m—I think our generation is sort of in between and so, I am—that’s what I have been doing for the last month, throwing away and letting go of some of this stuff because what I want to be is able to keep my brain sort of cleared out and not have to worry about hauling all this crap around so I can remember my songs, my stories. And—but I’ve got them pretty much written down and I taught them to a lot of people but, I still want to remember them. They saved my life because those people saved my life.

Partial Transcript: On the porch whenever they were working or not. But now, if you sat down on a porch in Sodom and it was anywhere between May and say October, you got a dishpan or something sitting in your lap with either a cutting knife or maybe you were expected to string that pot of beans. Or if they were working in the garden, you went out in the garden and they would sing with you in the garden.
That’s where I learned Pretty Fair Miss was out picking beans and so, when I taught it to Sam Gleaves, I taught—made him go into the garden with me and we sang it in the garden you know—because it was just a sweet thing. The first song I remember hearing was—I was five years old and my grandmother had died in February—my real grandmother—and then, I adopted Granny who lived up the road from my grandparents.
She was Mama’s aunt—my great-aunt. And I was really lucky because she was a keeper of traditions. She wouldn’t have told she was. She just had ways of doing things—a little bit peculiar. They were all that way and it was through her that I got to know all of them on a real personal—all the singers—on a real personal family kind of way because we were all related. So, I was staying the night with Granny. They’d been working in tobacco that night. I was five.
I had turned five in March and I was sitting in Granny’s lap and she was bump rocking—bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump—and I was almost asleep and heard this voice start singing from behind me. And if you would have asked me before Jim Taylor died, if it was a man’s or a woman’s voice I remembered singing the songs first, I would have said a woman because that’s who taught them to me.
But it wasn’t. I remember it as clear as a bell because the present was a very safe and happy place for me to be after Jim’s death and so, what I did was I just closed my eyes and fell right back into that time in my life when everybody I loved was still alive and everybody took care of everybody and we're good to everybody and they were good to me. And so, I remembered a bunch of songs, a bunch of conversations that we’d had—you know because life gets in the way.
But, it was Dillard Chandler—that was the first person I heard sing a ballad and it must have been in early June because they were sticky but they hadn’t been cutting tobacco. My guess is they were topping or suckering. And they were all worn out, you know sitting there about dark and Dillard started singing. And I can remember as a kid the cold chills breaking out in me thinking oh, I want to do that. I want to do that. How do I do that? So, I started to talking to Granny the next day.

Partial Transcript: Well, there was—oh, gosh there were so many of them but, as far as the singing went, singing of the songs, there was Granny. Now her real name, and she was my Great Aunt by marriage, but you know she sort of adopted me and I adopted her and it worked out. And I was very blessed that it did. So her name was Dellie Chandler Norton and her husband’s name was Ross Norton and he was my grandfather’s brother. And then, there was my—Lee, and Ross and Red Day (Bob) Norton were storytellers extraordinaire.
I wish you could have heard some of the stories they came up with and some of them were violent. But they told it like it was. You know, it’s like—I think it’s funny. I live in Petersburg and my grandfather used to say, oh you don’t want to end up around Petersburg, up yonder toward Mars Hill. I’d say, “Why?” And he’d say, “Why because your great grandmother’s brother was drawn and quartered right down there at the forks of the road during the civil war. That was right down there.”
And so, it is kind of funny you know, to be right here in the midst of the Rays, where they came from. But they were singers. Betty Ray was a singer and they said she was five feet and eleven inches tall and her hair hung almost to her knees when she brushed it out. And she was married to Tate Norton, that was my grandfather’s daddy and he was one of the best fiddle players in this part of the world. And she became a banjo player. And Duck Shelton who was 1920—or 1828 thrown in jail for counterfeiting money.
But, they couldn’t figure out what to do with him because his money had more silver in it than the mints did and so, they put him in jail in Nashville and he was such a great musician and fiddle player that the sheriff deputized him and during the day, he would go out and act as a deputy there around all Buncombe which included a bunch of places back then—Madison, Yancey, you know—part of Transylvania and Haywood. But, they—he would come in at night, and lock himself back up.
Well, he brought back a bunch of white liquor with him. Got into it and got drunk. So I know for a fact my family’s been singing since 1828 because it is in the sheriff’s log that he was required to return to the jail at night because one of the prisoners by the name of Duckworth Shelton, was into his cups and singing very bawdy songs out of the third story of the jail. He was singing love songs too. But anyway, it was—you know all of those people that—I mean I never heard him sing but, I will tell you this much.
Mary Sands and I have got a real interesting story about her that won’t take very long here in a minute and Granny’s sister, Berzilla Chandler Wallin, who was Cas Wallin’s, who was a big influence on, who was Cas Wallin’s sister-in-law—now this is all going to right over your head. Lee Wallin who was Berzilla’s husband and Cas’s brother, was one of the best singers and banjo players I have ever heard—bar none. His—their son, Doug Wallin, absolutely the best ballad singer I have ever heard, and I mean a beautiful voice. Have you ever heard Doug?
Interviewer
No.
Sheila
Oh, man. Well, he’s fabulous—absolutely. His voice is incredible and his brother, Jack wasn’t too bad either. He played banjo and sung. But, out of that it just kept turning around. My grandfather was a fiddle player. My uncle Bob Ray was a fiddle player. Now the Wallins were bad to get religion but, they would sing. They wouldn’t play an instrument but, they would sing and oh my aunt Ann Marie could sing like a bird—big old strong powerful voice.
So the church music and all was good so I have had so many influences. Inez Chandler taught me all the dirty songs. Sheila Stewart who was a great singer from over in Scotland; Ed Miller, Scottish ballad singer, Ian Anderson. I mean there are so many people that have influenced me all through my life, you know? It’s not just been Granny. Almeda Riddle out in Arkansas sounded a lot like my family but, it was through my family. Evelyn Ramsey, Doug Wallin, Granny Dellie Norton, Little Granny—that’s Berzilla Wallin, and her husband, Lee, Cas Wallin, Cas’s wife, Vergie.
I don’t know if I said Inez—I better throw her in there—Inez Chandler. And then there was you know, a whole slew of—oh, I said Doug and Jack Wallin and Dillard, Dillard Chandler. He was a fabulous singer and not many people knew it. Evelyn Ramsey was a marvelous singer. Obray Ramsey, Bob Ray. Obray Ramsey asked Mama to marry him. Boy, wouldn’t have I been a musician if that would have ever happened?

Partial Transcript: Berzilla was a little more reserved. That was Granny’s older sister. She was more of a religious person, organized religion. I am going to say that again. Berzilla was more of a religious—you know, kind of conventional organized religion person and I think Granny was more of God being a true, honest and loving giving God and all of this, that this God has created for us and I need to be out there helping it, moving it along—you know, taking care of it and that’s what she did.
She was a wild crafter—would go into the woods and she would find a patch of cane, fifteen by fifteen and she would go through very methodically, take out the kind of older, starting to go downhill a little bit. She always left the five healthiest, biggest plants to reseed and she told me that. People is foolish. They are going in there and taking every bit of them out. And so—now repeat that question—oh, about Berzilla.
She—Berzilla was Daddy said, one of the best singers from over around home when she was young. He said she had a beautiful voice. Well, you know the only one I’d ever heard was kind of like mine now, from the time she was about 60 on. But it was clear, Doug told me. And I could hear the richness of it in Doug’s voice, even though it was a man’s. I could still hear what Daddy had talked about and she was very, very into her family. She married very young. She was 14 I think when her and Lee married and he was 18.
And they stayed together their entire life and had maybe a dozen children. I remember Granny telling me about her losing two of them to, it was diphtheria I think. She held one all night and it died the next morning. And then, started holding the other, about four in the afternoon and it died by midnight. I mean she lost two children—you know, a year and a half—a little eighteen-month-old and then a three or four-year-old Granny said. Granny lost all of hers—died before she did.
I mean it was—but Berzilla was—she was different than Granny. She wasn’t as extroverted. But, she lived up in that holler you know with all them youngens and Lee and they had their own you know, community up there basically. People came to see them, you know? They didn’t have to go out to see anybody. But, her and Granny were always really close so I got to know Berzilla and love her really well. But she was a different person than Granny was. Granny was pretty wide open and she messed with you.
Now Berzilla would too. If you needed to go to the bathroom, which was the outhouse, you had to get her to go with you because of those damned African geese. Lee had gone to a hog raffle shoot and had won a mated pair of African geese. They mate for life and they’re those great big, you know four feet tall—big, eighty pounds, whopping geese. And those were the meanest things I have ever seen. They would try to kill you.
Well you know the main thing that I learned from all of those older women over home, those mountain women—was there is a core of strength that ran through them, that also I found in me and they kept telling me you know, it’s there. And they didn’t say that old foolish, "Well whatever doesn’t kill you, will make you stronger." You know, they didn’t use that one. It was, ‘life is life and life can be hard".
Hard most of the time and if you think, and my mother kind of convinced it. She said, “There is a world of trouble out there, Honey. If you think it ain’t going to knock on your door, you either stupid which you ain’t, or unlearnable or untrainable maybe” because Mom was a school teacher or you were very naïve and I don’t think you’re either one. So, when it comes, don’t ask why. All them old women would chorus in and say, “Why not?”
You know, because stuff happens and so, that was the most valuable lesson I learned from them. But they get you know, in order to spend time with them, I also had to take an interest in the rest of the stuff they were doing. It couldn’t be just because I liked them and enjoyed staying hanging out with them. That wasn’t reason enough to them. I had to want to help them work, learn how to plant a garden and my hand for the longest time, was the smallest hand that Granny had up there in the holler that would fit down in the canning jar.
When she died, I think there was 384 quarts of green beans and so, they had big gardens. Granny was a wild crafter and I wish I had some kind of recording device to have recorded what all she was talking about when she was in the woods. She would go through and just rake leaves into her bag or you know, pull up a root or two. She had a digging stick especially for Seng—digging ginseng because she said, you know, it looks like a little man.
All you do is kind of kneel down there, pop it between his legs and it will just pop right out of the ground—looks like a little man. And—but they were—I think they taught me the most important thing you can teach a tiny child. There was not a thing in this world that I could not do if I wanted to. Not a thing and if somebody tells me, no you can’t do that, I will say, huh—well, if I still want to in two weeks, I bet you I can because I’ve got to read about it and find it and figure it out.
So, I guess you know, people have asked me a lot—well, you’re one among many of those singers over there. Why do think it is that you’ve been so many places performing and there’s the word. It’s you know, they were not—hell, they were just fabulous singers. They were just great, from the heart and soul, every day, amazing singers. Carry tunes, remember words. I mean it was phenomenal. It was like parts of their brain had developed for that memory.
I mean they carried those songs everywhere they went and you know, that first big collector that—was it James Francis Child or—the Child Collection is what I am talking about or Francis James Child. I can’t remember. But anyway, his—he put together this book, five volumes and was going to do the tunes and then he died early but, he come to the conclusion that over in France and Spain and you know, all over Europe, Germany—these sing songs were sung in a different language and when I was in France this past December, I found that out.
People came up to me and said, Gramier, last time I heard that, Gramier she sang it. Norwegian Virgin is the same song. So then when they came over here, an interesting thing happened because Europe is small but to get from here back to Europe is—that’s a trek and they didn’t have any money. And so, what happened was the Oxford Tragedy became let’s see—I made fair maiden in Oxford. That’s how it starts out. Over here, (Sings) I met a little girl from Knoxville’, you know because Knoxville, Oxford—close enough.
And the—they had a tendency to change wording like it was not Glouster for Mary Jane Queen. It was sent to Nagotine. So, you know—but, they still kept in words like Dillard’s version of Black is Color and this is all so passionate to me. I sometimes—sometimes I just bawl. He—Evelyn Ramsey had a fabulous version of Black is Color but, Dillard got me off and said, now that’s a man’s song.
He’s talking about his woman that’s left him and she’s took up, married another man. And so, that’s a man’s song. And he taught me the way he sang it. And it was just slightly different from the way that Evelyn Ramsey sang it but, he was right. It was a fellow’s song.

Partial Transcript: Well, interestingly enough in The Place on the Face of this Earth—there is two of them that I have a totally, flawless easy way of understanding every word that they ever sang it is, in Australia, I didn’t have any problems at all. Now that might have been because it is such a—I mean if you’re female and all them men are running around talking that Aussie accent and that will just do it but, the other place is in the middle of Scotland, around Edinburgh.
I met a fabulous fiddle player while I was over there, Carol Anderson and she was around—between forty and forty-five—been fiddle since she was three and we had the best time because she words like Granny used—for nent, you know? We’ll be out there for nent passed. I’ll come pick you up. Crabbit, you know? Ah, don’t pay attention. She has tendency of crabbit—an unreasonable person—usually a female. Make it gom. Stay out of that kitchen. I am fixing to fix supper and I don’t want to no gom in there.
And so, they brought a lot of their words with them but, the for nent and gosh, there was another. An nent—you know, it all had to do with where you were in relationship to that building they were talking about. And so, a lot of the Scottish words, they brought them over here and stayed true and you know, a lot of people from Scotland have been here on the porch and said, I just don’t believe that. Granny used to say, cloat for a diaper and I said—or for a nappy, the English say. And I said yes, she called them cloat.
So did Mama. But, now they did of course change some of the titles of the songs and stuff like that because they were not familiar with place. But there’s like soldier—not soldier—young hunting says, (Sings) Come in, come in my old true love and spend this night with me for I’ve got a bed. It’s a very fine bed and I’ll give it up for thee---thee and I will give it up for thee.” And then the next verse says, (Sings) “Oh, I can’t come in or I am not coming in to spend this night with thee for I’ve got a wife in the old Scotland.
This night she waits for me—me, this night she waits for me.” Then they have a whole conversation then about you know—and she winds up stabbing him with her pen knife, throwing him in the old dry well and then she gets in an argument with a bird. It’s pretty weird.

Partial Transcript: Like Lord Thomas? You know it was really interesting because the lords and ladies, there was Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight, you know? But then, Little Margaret, it was never Lady Margaret and it was never Lord William. It was Sweet William and Little Margaret. Then it was Barbary Allen because she was such a mean person. But it was Sweet William. Let’s see. It was Lord Thomas and Fair Ellender.
See they left the lady’s name off there too. And Lord Daniel and Little Matthew Groves but now, they’ve got English names too. I found that out when I was over there this past—because I went to the Sidmouth Festival which is their national and had a lot of conversations with people about where did that really come from? What’s the name of that? Because I’d always heard, Cas would just say now these two young boys is coming home from school and then he would start singing the Two Brothers and Sheila Stewart was amazed at the similarities in the one I sang and the one that Cas sang, that he taught to me.
And that’s thing I have discovered is that it's real similar. The story is still the same. Now they might have changed—in fact Dillard had one ballad, Little Matthew Groves where the little Robert Ford was a standing nearby. Of course, he was the one that killed Jessie James. He was back in history some time ago too I guess, about 700 years ago, because Dillard lists him in a ballad. Then there were the ballads about infanticide, you know—that fell out of the tradition pretty quick but, I—Granny knew a couple of verses to one and Berzilla knew one and I wound up finding it because I googled it when I got a computer.
There it was—Mary Hamilton, Four Maries. And I think it you know, all this singing and everything for them, it was true everyday life passion but, for me, it became a passion as well in a different way. And you can see it in these young people who were so hungry I think for something that’s been a—not just out there floating in the air. Oh, that’s a part of you know, the Jewish tradition or the traditional music tradition or you know, the Scotch Irish tradition or whatever. But, they didn’t marry it from tradition.
The acoustic societies, you know Latino and our country now being one of them, they told stories in song, in music. It was a way that kept their families together. They played together, went to church together, sang together, made music together, formed family bands, married their own cousin and so, that music stayed a vital and vibrant part of their everyday life. Cecil Sharp said in the teens when he was in here, he would be walking down the road and somebody would come up to him—they very—and he describes him. It’s a great description.
If you haven’t read the introduction to Cecil Sharp’s book, you really ought to. I’ll be glad to give you a copy of it before you leave because it’s fabulous and what he says is, in the Laurel Country, which is here, I met people in the roads, in the businesses, in the churches and in their homes and in their stage coach inns that were just as likely to break into song as they were into speech and the Laurel Country for me, has become a place of profoundly passionate music sung a nest of singing birds.
So that was about my family and I’m proud of them but, more than that I love them for keeping it together in times when it very well could have disappeared and people like Donna Ray and my daughter, Melanie—these young people like Branson Reins and Madeline Wadley and Ash Devine and you know, Sarah Oh, Thompson Lynch. I mean they wouldn’t have a clue. But here they come again, you know twenty years old, right on up to their forties. So I think it will make it into the twenty second century. I got three grandchildren and the little girl can sing.

Partial Transcript: Yeah, there were collectors in here. You know a lot of people think that we were really isolated in Madison County and especially in the community of Sodom. Daddy said the roads from 1920 hadn’t changed very much from the Civil War time and then it was during—it was after the 20’s, you know when the stock market crashing and the great depression. Daddy said that they just—nobody had the money to fix anything but, he said things over home got a little worse.
You know it was already pretty bad but it got a little more testy during that time, but then he said that Roosevelt went into office and they started actually paying people to fix roads and build outhouses and you know, show them how to use lime and all of that stuff for their outhouses and how to grow a proper garden to where it doesn’t leech all the stuff out of the soil. And so, Daddy said that was a big deal. People were going to camps and learning how to you know, collect oral histories, music and so, we had Sharp who came in 1916.
It’s a long story but, just very short, I’ll say that he was up in Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts during the summer. It was either a 14 or 15 and he—Mrs. Starrow had two passions in life. One was the Girl Scouts and she had a camp up there that she invited Girl Scouts from across the country to come to and she also loved English and English folk dancing and Morris dancing and so, she would invite Sharp to come over who was the Academic from England who, he himself said had written the definitive work now had been written of all traditional music from Scotland and England.
And he came to Massachusetts and meanwhile, she got a letter from a friend of hers in Western North Carolina who had started a folk school in Brasstown. So it was Ollie Dame Campbell and John C. Campbell and he died and she kept the school up. And she sent some notated—she was a musicologist—sent notated papers with the notes and the words back up to her friend, Mrs. Starrow in Buzzard Bay, Massachusetts.
While all they were sitting around the table eating supper that night, Mrs. Sparrow opened it up and all this music—sheet music—fell out. And there sat Mr. Sharp. He looks down, kind of glances at it, and then straightens back up, takes a drink of tea. She gathers them up—Mrs. Starrow does—and says, “Oh, did you see this one, Mr. Sharp?” And slid it across the table. He took one look at it and it was, ‘In Charlottetown where I was born, there lived a fair maid well, made every you hay a day and her name, Barbary Allen and he said, “Mrs. Starrow, can you read the music to this?”
And she said, “Yes.” It’s extremely interesting. So, in 1916 he and his assistant, Maude Carpalese, spent forty-eight weeks during the summers of 16, 17, 18, and maybe 19. And collected over one thousand tunes and almost six hundred individual songs. Seventy-eight versions of Barbary Allen. That was in the teens. Then in, as Daddy was saying, when Roosevelt was doing the works program, Frank C. Brown came from Duke University.
He came all up into Beach Mountain, you know back into—around Grandfather and he collected a lot of the stories and such from the Hicks, and the Harmons and Doc Watson’s family and all of them and then, he headed this way and he did manage to spend about four days over there in what—because he was hunting for what Sharp called the Laurel Country.
And so, he did spend some time over there but, I think there was so much commotion going on over there at that time. Granny and Berzilla were in a logging camp working—you know her and Lee were married and I think at that point, Pap and Granny were married and so, they’d all gone off you know—because that was when the chestnut plot. I think so. They were sawing all the big chestnuts down but, they weren’t there.
But now my great, great, great aunt sang for him, Zip Rice and Flora Rice sang for Frank C. Brown. Well after that, then there was a couple of folks that came in through there by the name of John and Alan Lomax. They briefly—they came through Asheville and skirted down enough and actually talked to Cas Wallin and I think they met Dillard if I recall.
I will have to get all my books out and look and make sure. But this is as I pretty much I remember it. So that was another influence you know by collectors. And then in the 50’s I guess, there was about one a decade that showed up and if they hadn’t of, I think the tradition would die down. There was a very strong relationship that connected the resources and the researchers.
I believe that because I think were it not for outside interests, I mean when things are changing as fast as they change during the twentieth century, people would—well, I mean Daddy said, Daddy and Mama both said, we threw our culture away both hands. We didn’t want anything to do with it at all because it reminded us of growing up poor—tremendously poor, severely poor and she said we just didn’t want to have anything to do with it.
But now Granny and them, every time that somebody would come through like Frank C. Brown and then John and Alan Lomax and then, Alan Lomax came back again in the early 60’s and then, Peter Gott came and moved in the early 60’s over in Madison County—over on Shelton Laurel. Got to know all the musicians and the pickers and the singers and certainly focused in on Lee and Berzilla and their family.
And then, John Cohen came at the invitation of Peter Gott and he did the movie, End of an Old Song which all my family were in and then Lomax came back again. There was a guy in 70—what was his name? Give me just a second. Mike? No, that was in the 80’s. I cannot think of this guy’s name. But he did a recording I think called High and Lonesome Sound. He was from England and I cannot remember his name.

Partial Transcript: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that was in the early 70s and then, in the early 70s as well, there were four guys out of West Virginia that got a grant to go around and put together music festivals throughout the southern Appalachia’s. John and Dave Morris and Dwight Diller and John Martin. Really good musicians and they wound up putting on a show in Sodom.
And so, that again, they were collecting and learning the songs and making a big deal over the music and so, that bumped it on in through the 70’s and then in the 80’s, danged if Alan Lomax didn’t show back up in 1982 and did a project called American Quilt that my family was in. And then Doug—and then ’76 of course, was the bi-centennial. Things flagged a little in the 80’s because I had babies and you know, was raising kids and stuff.
And then the early 90’s started out with a big bang and everybody was interested. Doug won the National Endowment—or received the National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and the North Carolina State Heritage Award. And then in 2013, I got the NEA award too, which is pretty unusual for one family to receive two fellowships from the NEA. And so, the music I think made my family the peculiar, strange, creative crowd they are. We would have been totally different people. You know Mama and Daddy associated all that stuff with poverty and it would have disappeared no doubt.
 

Partial Transcript: They were all related by marriage, blood, and usually both. They remained a community right on up through the 70s because everybody was family—either married into it or they were born into it and married into it too. Like Granny said, “We used to have youngens that would get married or get married and have youngens.” You know how that goes. So, but what I am saying is that you know I have got cousins right to this day, like little old Donna Ray, she would pick that phone up right now and if she is having some kind of crisis, I would be on it, you know?
Because that’s family and that’s just the way mountain people are, you know. And I’ve got a bunch of family. Josh Goforth—I assume you have met Josh—is family. David Holt might as well be, you know. My granny loved him better than an ice cream sundae—him and Jenny both and they were just as good to her as if she was family. And I have always appreciated and loved David for that because he made no distinction.
But the cool thing about me and David is I told a story about Cas’s wife, Vergie one time and everybody was just dying laughing from us coming off stage and David was going out and he looked at me and smiled and said, “Isn’t it great when you can tell the 100 percent absolute and total truth and get this reaction?” But she really was crazy. Yup. So, you know and I’m sure that David—now he’s told me stories about growing up in Texas.
He didn’t grow up all that good but, I’m sure it was like a foreign country to Jenny but, she fit in too and we love her too. Now we don’t like all of them that’s moved in because some of them you know, Daddy used to say, ‘everybody can be butt hole, just some of them is more unpleasant than other butt holes.’ But it’s right now and I understand this—I was a lot more fiery when I was young—but, any interest in these traditions I would like to encourage unless somebody is just going to blatantly do what Kingston Trio did.
You know I think it’s a good thing and I don’t care where anybody is from. You know a lot of people gets their back legs all hiked up because somebody is from up north. Well, my family fought for the north in the Civil war. What do I care? But, you understand what I’m saying. It’s—this music belongs to all of us. It really is. It’s all of our family’s gift to us. Some of us have just forgotten it and I am just glad mine didn’t.

Partial Transcript: Daddy said the radio really didn’t affect it all that much because you had the Skillet Lickers, Uncle Dave Macon. You had minstrels playing. You had—and then the Carter family, you know. They might as well have been family. They were just from right over the ridge here and so, everybody loved the Carter family and so, the radio was mostly about music. Daddy said what made the big difference is TV. He said that’s what changed this part of the world.
Well, he said World War II came along and it was six or eight years before actual colored TV came into the mountains, and prior to that, we couldn’t even carry a daggone antenna all over the side of the mountain and it would not pick up a darn thing—nowhere. We got all of ours from Knoxville, Tennessee because we got blocked out from Asheville and so—but it was when they got those big, tall revolving you know antennas and the TV that showed everybody in the mountains, not just those who had gone off to the fight in the war.
But everybody—what a substantially sized good old big world there was out there and Daddy said, and mountain people are just like everybody else. They all need a car. Times is good. They were the golden age. And so, they worked hard and you know that’s—I don’t know where I was going with that. That’s the other thing about being sixty-four, you just kind of go off into tangent. I don’t even remember what’s the question.

Partial Transcript: Oh, TV and Daddy made that comment not long before he died, you know he said, “Do you remember that when sat here that July night and watched them walk on the moon in 1969?” I said, “Absolutely.” He said, “You know, most of our people don’t believe that happened and most of them don’t have TV.” The ones that—because in 69, there were still families that didn’t have it. It was kind of like switching from now from CD’s to just streaming, off the internet streaming and everything—everything off the internet.
You know, we’re all resistant to change. But now the ones that went to the war, and that worked—the big companies during the war, they were ready and they had money now and so, that’s what changed it all.

Partial Transcript: Oh, absolutely. Bluegrass stole a bunch of our most gifted—and I am not saying bluegrass is bad. I am just saying they were more interested and attracted to that driving sound than they were to somebody singing an acapella love song and I don’t blame them. But what they should have done is done what Branson Reins and Josh Goforth—they’d learned off of them.
You know, don’t quit at one. Learn how to do both of them. And Sam Gleaves too. And so, that took care of that. They can play like traditional musicians or they can plan like bluegrass.

Partial Transcript: You know I don’t ever recall seeing any of those people embarrassed to sing in front of everybody, any situation. They sat on that big, huge stage that Dr. Martin Luther Jr. stood on and said, “I have a dream.” They sung off of that stage just like they were sitting on the porch. I don’t remember them being self-conscious.
They were just as real anywhere they went as they were on the porch and if people didn’t like them, that’s a big old place out there. They can go somewhere else. Granny would carry her gun and she would—I would say, “Granny, why are you hauling that daggone gun around all the time for?” She’d say, “Well, you just can’t tell never tell when you’re going to run up on somebody who needs killing.”
You know and so, they didn’t—if they were poor, they certainly never admitted it to me. Now they would say things like, “You know, Honey, a rich man is just easy to love up to as a poor man. Why do you keep chasing them poor men?” And Berzilla would say, “Well, that’s all she’s got around is poor men.” So, you know—but, they had wicked senses of humor—great joke tellers, song singers. So I don’t recall them ever being self-conscious or afraid to do anything.

Partial Transcript: Well, it was but see they were still such a closed community over there in the 60’s and 70’s. They didn’t realize that—they knew about change. But they didn’t realize that something they held near and dear to them is just going to go away. They couldn’t believe that. It had never happened before. But, that was the way of my generation and my parents.
You know, they left and worked and most of them came home. But, with my generation, they just scattered except for me. I’ve still got a couple or three cousins around. I used to have seventy-two first cousins.
 

Partial Transcript: And I love both. I love country and western a lot better than—the old country and western like Hank Williams Senior, you know Patsy Cline. But, the—I think it has to do with if you learn something in order to make a living, then it starts to feel like a job—you know, like this little youngens that they dress up and put them in beauty pageants and stuff. But with me, it was—you know, it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t like, ‘hurry up so you can get out on stage and sing.’ It was like, ‘oh, do you want to learn this old one about a ship a going down [unclear/inaudible] [01:00:52]?
Well, who would say no to that if they were eleven years old? Yeah. Isn’t that cannibalism? Yeah, but they don’t quite get to it. And I loved all kinds of music. I still do. But, to me the words and the music of growing up over there in Sodom is what speaks to me on a—it’s almost like an ancient level. It’s like words truly from my people—you know from my ancestors. I had my DNA done and I thought there had to be a little exotic blood, maybe somewhere.
I am the whitest girl you’ll ever see in your life. I am Saxon, Brit Saxon, Anglo, Norman, German, Viking and I told them that when I was in England performing, I said well, there is one thing about it. I’m sure my Viking blood came from all those little round English girls that didn’t run quite fast enough. And they all went (laughs). But I do say exactly what I think on stage. It’s always interesting. Fellow in Australia said, “Hey, mate. Love your accent.” And I said, “Hell, I ain’t got no accent, friend. You’re the one who has got the accent.”
So, it’s—but the thing that they taught me too is appreciate everybody. We are all going to be a little different. We can maybe rub each other the wrong way. You can laugh or cry. It’s all the same—a lot more fun to laugh. And that’s got me through some pretty tough spots. But for me, there is—some of these songs absolutely speaks to the fabric that I am cut from. I know they did because they touched that part of me and I can feel it. It’s like vibrates something inside of me that nothing else does. One of the few passions I have got left in life, you know? And what a great one to have.

Partial Transcript: Well, people of my family would lose a connection to their ancient history. Now it’s not a part of the culture anymore. I think the culture is pretty much gone. The one I grew up in is definitely gone. It doesn’t matter that people are over there killing hogs. That ain’t what I’m talking. The people—see I thought home was about geographical location. It’s about people and when the people are gone, you know—I could probably kill a hog but, I wouldn’t want to because I have seen them do it. But, you know it’s—my children don’t have a connection to that culture. They love to hear me talk about it.
So, basically what you’ve got now are stories, and music, and songs from that culture. They still are reflections of the culture that’s gone. I think the cool thing to do would be to start doing what Cecil Sharp maybe did with some of these young folks. Now I could go out and do collections for—to record what the young people are singing now because Sharp didn’t do that.
You know, in a traditional vain, kind of see what—see how Donna Ray sings Young Emily and then go over and talk to somebody over on Spring Creek that might know a version of it and it might be punked up and rock and roll banjo behind it. But I don’t care, you know? As long as they are telling that story and as long—little old Elizabeth LaPrelle and Anna, they were over in England with us and we had the best time but, now Elizabeth is serious about it. She’s good. Anna is a lot like me. She’s good at having fun.
But, for some reason and—you know and I have been a fairly letting go, rolling with the punches type person but, when it comes to these songs and this music, and the stories of my family, well I am intensely serious because if it hadn’t been for the stories I tell and the music I sing, nobody would know hardly who Granny was or Dillard or Doug Wallin or Inez or Berzilla or the fellow, George Landers, the one that sang the Scotland Man. I mean who are these people? Well—and I want my parents to be remembered. My daddy was hysterically funny.
He could tell the best stories and to show you what kind of person Mama was, Daddy was laying there in the coffin, and Mama had the chair pulled up and everybody that went by, she’d say, “Well now you know I was a lot sicker than you daddy was.” “Now he is dead, Mama. It means he won this one.” He might have won a lot of the fights but now, he won the war. But, and they were quick like that. I mean it’s—and they know that part of what worries me is from these songs, I learned a sense of tragedy. Things happen bad.
You can get your head cut off and more things done with it than you have the imagination to create. But Granny always said, “Listen to the songs. Listen to the stories they tell and don’t do that.” It gets you in trouble. You can learn about life and these songs and stories without having to do it. Well, I had learned songs to do it too but, that was part of the reason I think they kept them around and the other thing was they were intensely passionate about them too. They loved them. They loved the songs.

Partial Transcript: Well, you notice what my drink tap because I have a well right out there. The young people today—I, before I last year—well, let me back up. Last year, I spent almost three solid months out of the country. I was in Australia, getting ready to go this time last year. I was in England for five weeks—almost three—or a little three in Australia and then, I was in France for a little over one. And so, it was really interesting.
But, there is an attraction I guess is the only word I can come up with because when you start—and I am not saying that—well, I will tell you that little story later—but, when I got up and sang, especially in France, I was told that the audience is at least half of them or better, would not know English. But they had translated the songs and whenever I was singing, I would hear them sigh. Exactly and it was coming from the people who didn’t—who were reading their papers and—because I think this music touches us all. I don’t know what your question is. I’ve already forgotten. I am think I am flagging but, what was the—
Young people, okay. Well, you know I’ve heard that a lot. I’ve heard, what are young people losing? Well, it depends on where the young people are. If they are sitting here on my porch Thursday night, Friday night and Saturday night with a bunch of older musicians, and all of us playing music, and then about 11:30, the ballads are starting to get sung, these kids are learning it. I was teaching in England. I had three young women who followed me around and during that time of about ten hours, they learned five or six songs—just in the way I learned, you know—call and answer, back and forth.
So, I am not that worried. There are still young people interested. Now what are the rest of them going to miss? Same thing that kids missed in my generation. It will just be a little deeper cut this time because if you take that computer away from them, God help you. I don’t know if they will be able to figure out how to wire a house to get electricity and I am not saying they’re dumb. They are some of the smartest kids, brightest kids that we’ve ever had because they’ve got so much information. But you know, sometimes I long back to the simpler times—not to be confused with easier. I think these times are harder actually.

Partial Transcript: Community sings. Well, they’ll flock out for those. It’s kind of like Christmas carols all year long. You know, they’ll let you in and sing. Or they’ll come and sing. And its just songs that we all know and love. (Sings) Water is wide, it can cross over. Neither have I wing to fly—which is an old traditional ballad. I guess that’s about it unless you’ve got other questions.

Partial Transcript: Okay. (Sings a song) Well, I should have been practicing some. You might have to give me a minute. All right. It’s just been a long time. I realize since I have played the banjo. Well, Branson, you know my fiddler left in August. Let me see if I can do—see if this is going to be too high. And I’ve had a—I’ve had this crud cold that was going around. Just now, my voice is sort of straightening out. I’ll give you all the excuses Granny used to use.
I am a little hoarse today. Let me see. And that’s too high for me. My voice ain’t going to do it. But anyway, that’s the difference in the two-finger style and the other—so let me just. I should have practiced. I’m sorry.

Partial Transcript: And that’s how I started out first playing was with the two-finger style that Jerry Adams played. Obray Ramsey played it and interestingly enough, Earl Scruggs played it. When he first started out, that’s how his mama taught him how to play because I interviewed Earl one time. But now the style I learned was one that was called Claw Hammer that I learned from Dwight Dillard and this—it’s similar to the round peak style that Tommy Gerald and that crowd played as well but, this is really hard driving, West Virginia style and it’s called Claw Hammer and you’ll see the difference right off. Let’s see.
What do I want to play? (Sings and plays banjo) And that was one that actually Bascom Lunsford collected and that a lot of people thinks he wrote it. I am not sure if he wrote that one but, I do know he wrote Mountain Dew. Oh, I will do the very first one that I ever played. Claw Hammer. How’s that?

Partial Transcript: Do you want me to do one more song I won’t mess up or? There was—we get together up here all the time. If you all want to come back.
Interviewer
I would love—in fact, I was going to ask you if you have a jam going on, on the porch, I would love to—that’s the one thing I am missing from the film is really having a bunch of playing together.
Sheila
Oh, they’ll—and they’ll gather up in the living room and out here and spill all the way off down the bank and play music. Well, let do another full verse of that and not mess it up. And it’s called Where the Soul of Man Never Dies. And then there was shake note singing and you know that was—let’s see if I can do it. (Sings) If I had a book, I could do it but, you know a lot of those older ladies would sit there and they didn’t have to open their books even for the shakes. Do you want me to go get a book and do some?